My rating: 2.5 stars
Coming up against the end of the year with only 2 letters
left for my A to Z Author Challenge, I decided to read this memoir by Agathe
Von Trapp to fulfill the “V” entry on the list. As a long-time fan
of the The Sound of Music, I had initially approached this book with
some amount of excitement – after all, the title of the book draws a distinct
connection to one of my favorite movies of all time! Now that I finished
reading the book, I must say that I am quite disappointed, as this book turned
out to be nothing like what I expected, and not in a good way.
First, the writing was very drab and overly simplistic to
the point of being boring. Of course, I did cut some slack due to the
fact that this was a memoir written by someone who didn’t write for a living,
but still, I felt that this was where a good editor could’ve come in and
cleaned things up a bit so that the book would’ve been more readable. To
be honest, I’m not too sure if this would appropriately fall into the memoir
category because there is actually very little about Agathe herself or about
her siblings. Instead, the book felt more like a rambling account of the
history of the Von Trapp family, from the grandparents to the parents and then
eventually to the children. There was a lot of time spent on describing
things that the family did/saw/heard, including elaborate descriptions of the
various places where the family lived as the children were growing up as well
as when they were on tour, plus a lot of stories about things that occurred
before Agathe herself even existed. For example, there were entire
chapters dedicated to her father (Captain Von Trapp), her beloved birth mother
(also named Agathe), her maternal grandmother Gromi (the family had lived in
her home for a few years early on), ordinary events such as birthday and
holiday celebrations, her father’s sailing experiences while serving in the
navy, the various nannies and governesses they had and what had been taught to
them, etc. etc. It felt like a lot of mundane detail regurgitated in a
simplistic, monotone kind of way – I will admit that I found myself nodding off
a few times while reading so about a third of the way through the book, I started
skimming rather than actually reading word for word as I had been doing
previously.
The writing aside, I think my biggest problem with this
book was the fact that it seemed to be written for the sole purpose of “setting
the record straight” – basically to relay the message that the creators/producers
behind the stage and movie versions of The Sound of Music got it “all
wrong” in terms of their portrayal of the Von Trapp family.
Throughout the book (it felt like every couple pages to be honest), we, as the
readers, were constantly reminded that this detail was wrong or that detail
didn’t match or they didn’t actually do this thing or that thing – basically,
it seemed that the author’s point was to reiterate that like 99% of what was in
the movie/musical was false. As if that weren’t enough, there was also an
entire chapter dedicated essentially to “criticizing” the movie/musical where
the author makes her resentment toward the inaccurate portrayal of the family
(and the fact that her family never benefited financially from the musical or
the movie due to a contract that had been signed when the rights were sold that
prevented them from receiving royalties initially) quite known. I’m not
against the author venting her grievances about the family being taken
advantage of in terms of the unfair contract piece, but I felt like the book
went a bit overboard in its negative tone toward the musical/movie. To be
honest, as a fan of The Sound of Music, I felt a bit insulted after reading this
book – no, not by the author’s negativity / bitterness toward a movie I adored,
as everyone is subject to their opinions, plus the author certainly has the
right to feel anger and resentment about not being portrayed accurately – where
I feel insulted is that the author went to such pains to point out how “different”
the portrayal was from real life. I’m sorry, but I think most movie-going
audiences nowadays are smart enough to know that producers almost always take
certain amounts of creative liberty when adapting a real-life story to the big
screen – it’s pretty much a given with all movies that any portrayals, whether
of real-life events / people or stories from books, won’t be 100%
accurate. Also, there’s no doubt that those of us who are already fans of
the movie/musical have that extra layer of familiarity where we already knew
the portrayal in there was only “loosely based” (or “inspired by” if that fits
better) the story of the Von Trapp family, so in a sense, we weren’t really
expecting to see a “100% accurate portrayal”. In trying too
hard to state the obvious, this book ended up turning me off quite a bit to it.
Also, in reading this book, there were 2 things that
surprised me, mostly because I didn’t expect them. The first was the
heavy religious undertone in the book, which I guess shouldn’t really be
surprising given the background of the family and the time period, but I was
honestly a bit put off by the constant references to “being guided by God’s
hand” or “God was watching over the family” or everything that happened being
attributed to “God’s intervention and will”. Don’t get me wrong –
it’s not that I’m not religious or anything like that, it’s just that 1) I
don’t like being preached at, especially in books, and 2) I prefer to know
ahead of time if the book is going to be heavily slanted towards a particular
religious perspective so I can decide whether I want to read or not. The
other thing that surprised me was what came across as the author’s ambivalent
attitude toward her stepmother Maria. When talking about her birth mother
in the first half of the book, the author seemed a lot more enthusiastic and I
could sense the fondness and admiration she had for her mother, but after her
mother died and Maria joined the family, the author’s tone came across more
detached and “matter-of-fact,” almost as though she was talking about an
outsider rather than a member of her family. I haven’t read Maria Von
Trapp’s biographies, but I do know a bit of background about Maria from other
things I’ve read so I do know she was a difficult person with a
larger-than-life personality that set her apart drastically from the author’s
mother. I’m not necessarily trying to judge their relationship but I just
thought it was interesting that the author painted such a peachy sweet,
saccharine portrait of the entire family (honestly it seemed that everyone in
the family was flawless and perfect, even the extended family consisting of all
the aunts and uncles), but when it came to Maria, the tone was obviously
different (not necessarily negative per se, but detached and less emotive).
While I was obviously disappointed with this book, it
wasn’t an entirely bad experience, as some parts truly were interesting – such as
the last chapter for example where the author gave a brief update on each of
her siblings and what happened to them after the Trapp Family Singers
disbanded. Also a few tidbits here and
there that were interesting “fun facts” about the family, though I honestly
didn’t feel that the information warranted an entire book to be written.
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